CURATED LIST BY THE RRASP TEAM
Our monthly top picks of upcoming deadlines in August is curated by the RRASP Team for creatives from various industries.
AWARD FOR RECENT GRADS
Developed by artists for artists, the I I I Artist Fund awards a $1000 grant to a recent MFA graduate in Visual Art. This grant is available to an MFA graduate in Visual Art who graduated May 2025 or later. Candidates must demonstrate a strong research-based practice that responds to contemporary contexts. Multidisciplinary and conceptual artists working in mediums including, but not limited to, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, textile, installation, performance, sound, video, and new media are encouraged to apply.
DEADLINE: August 1st, 2026
CALL FOR SHORT FILMS
The Solidarity Short Film Series invites filmmakers and video artists to explore the many forms solidarity can take across personal, political, historical, and imagined contexts. Seeking works that challenge narratives of isolation and division, the series welcomes films engaging themes of collective action, care, resistance, joy, justice, and connection across communities. Submissions from diverse perspectives and approaches are encouraged.
DEADLINE: August 1st, 2026
CALL FOR TIME BASED WORK
Idle Hands invites emerging and mid-career artists based in New York City (all five boroughs eligible) to apply for the Idle Hands Incubation Award, offering a $10,000 unrestricted stipend, professional mentorship, and a culminating exhibition in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn loft space..
DEADLINE: August 4th 2026
VISUAL ARTS AWARD
The Meridian Award is an independent international award granting a $1,000 unrestricted cash prize to one contemporary artist working in any medium. Founded independently in New York City, the award supports independent, self-directed contemporary practices and welcomes submissions from artists worldwide.
DEADLINE: August 5th, 2026
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Café Royal Cultural Foundation will award an exhibition/project grant to NYC artists in music, visual arts, performance, and literature. The grant amount is $10,000.
DEADLINE: August 5th, 2026
CALL FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Black Box Gallery is excited to announce a color photography juried group photo show. Contemporary color photography has a big range of dynamic colors being used for landscape, portraiture, architecture, fashion, street, abstract, documentary, still life, narrative, conceptual projects, nature and night photography. How do photographers use color to think about, compose, stylize and captivate and present contemporary photography?
DEADLINE: August 7th, 2026
CALL FOR WEARABLE ART
The Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), a Brooklyn-based non-profit, is inviting submissions from STYLISTS for wearable looks inspired by the aesthetics (and counter-aesthetics) of the Attention Economy: we are thinking about the textures, surfaces, rhythms, and patterns of the digital world that monetizes human attention, and the forms of
life that bend and defy these dynamics.
DEADLINE: August 9th, 2026
PUBLIC ART COMMISSION
The Alabama Historical Commission is seeking qualifications for an artist commission that will honor the last known African captives trafficked to the United States through the transatlantic slave trade: the Clotilda survivors. The memorial will convey dimensions of the survivors’ lives and legacies—celebrating their resilient and determined spirits amidst violent dislocation, enslavement, and discrimination. It will preserve collective memory, honor heritage, and offer public space for healing.
DEADLINE: August 9th, 2026
CALL FOR EXHIBITION PROPOSALS
The Sunroom Project Space offers artists in the New York City area who are in the early stages of their careers—regardless of age—a chance to develop and showcase a site-specific, solo project in the Sunroom or Sun Porch of Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill.
DEADLINE: August 9th, 2026
CALL FOR ARTWORKS
Poa Arts Center is looking for Chinese adoptee artists whose practice engages with adoptee identity as a central theme. This exhibit centers the voices of Chinese adoptee artists, illuminating the lived experiences and creative expressions that emerge as they negotiate, reimagine, and reclaim their complex identities.
DEADLINE: August 9th, 2026
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The Wassaic Project is currently holding an annual Open Call for its 2027 Summer Exhibition for artists of all mediums, including: 2D work, sculpture, video, new media, site-specific installation, performance, text, poems, essays, publication-specific work, etc. If selected, your work will be showcased alongside a diverse range of pieces and performances in and around historic Wassaic and Maxon Mills.
DEADLINE: August 10th, 2026
PUBLIC ART FELLOWSHIP
The Queer|Art Design Grant is a new initiative supporting projects that explore queer histories, legacies, and futures. The program will award two $10,000 USD grants to emerging queer creatives across the design industry, making it the largest cash grant for LGBTQ+ designers in the country.
DEADLINE: August 14th, 2026
CALL FOR CURATORS
Smack Mellon seeks proposals from Emerging Curators based in the New York City area for our annual Emerging Artists Summer Group Exhibition. The exhibition will take place across Smack Mellon’s two gallery spaces and is slated to open during the summer of 2027.
DEADLINE: August 15th, 2026
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
MTA Arts & Design seeks images of artists’ previous work for consideration in upcoming public art opportunities related to ADA accessibility upgrades and other improvements at three Queens stations: Parsons Blvd, Briarwood, and Jamaica-179 St. The station artworks will be realized in mosaic and/or glass by an approved fabricator, with each averaging between 475-600 sq ft across multiple surface areas. Prior experience with materials will not factor into the review. Artwork in any medium may be submitted.
DEADLINE: August 15th, 2026
NEW WORK GRANT
Prospect Art invites visual artists worldwide to apply for the 2027 NEW WORK / ONE WORK Open Call under the curatorial theme We Come in Pieces, developed by 2026–2027 Curatorial Fellow Alma Sammel. Exploring ideas of estrangement, shared planetary belonging, and perspectives beyond the human, the open call welcomes projects that challenge familiar ways of seeing, sensing, and knowing, and that explore relationships between human and more than human worlds.
DEADLINE: August 16th 2026
CALL FOR EXHIBITION PROPOSALS
The Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY is excited to announce that submissions are now open for our 78th Regional Exhibition. For over 75 years, the Regional Exhibition has celebrated artists from across the Northeast and Eastern Canada, showcasing a wide range of creative voices in a museum setting. We believe this exhibition offers a fantastic opportunity for artists to gain experience, build their exhibition history, and share their work with a broader audience. Artists must be 18 or older and live in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, or Vermont or Ontario in Canada.
DEADLINE: August 17th, 2026
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Art at the Time Like This presents its open call for Take One Action, a public art project and virtual exhibition inviting artists to submit one image and one action that can be taken to bolster our democracy. Responding to current events and news cycles, this project asks how art can move beyond reflection and towards participation. What does it mean to act collectively in a time like this?
DEADLINE: August 21st, 2026
OPEN CALL FOR PERFORMERS
The Bronx Cultural Visions Fund (BCVF) seeks to support the development of new ideas and the production of new work in the performing arts, including but not limited to dance, music, theater, performance art, and multi-disciplinary performance work. Open to Bronx-based emerging and mid-career individual artists and organizations with budgets up to $250,000, BCVF awards are intended to have a meaningful impact on an artist’s career or an organization’s development.
DEADLINE: August 27th, 2026
VISUAL ARTS GRANT
Liu Shiming Art Foundation is pleased to announce that the grant application for Liu Shiming Artist Grants is now open. Established to support the work of visual artists during the first decade of their careers, the Liu Shiming Artist Grants enable the creation of new projects that explore the interplay between traditional, cultural, or historical influences and contemporary artistic practice. Each year, up to five artists are selected to receive a $5,000 grant.